Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) have become a prevailing technology in the industry of lighting. Alongside the market transition to LED lighting, dimming techniques, as well as techniques for controlling the resultant color of multi-color LED arrays, have become well-established in the art. The implementation of these techniques commonly involve wireless communication, which necessitates some provisioning process for associating between the dimmer and the LED lamp.
Regarding this issue, US Patent Application 20080111491 discloses a wireless lighting control system comprises a dimmer switch and a remote control. The dimmer switch is coupled in series between an AC power source and a lighting load and comprises a first actuator and a wireless receiver. The dimmer switch is operable to control the amount of power delivered to the lighting load in response to an actuation of the first actuator or a wireless control signal received by the wireless receiver. The remote control comprises a second actuator and a wireless transmitter operable to transmit the wireless control signal is response to an actuation of the second actuator. The remote control is operable to be associated with the dimmer switch in response to simultaneous actuations of the first and second actuators. Accordingly, the dimmer switch subsequently controls the intensity of the lighting load in response to the wireless control signal transmitted by the remote control. However, the disclosed association technique is not applicable when the LED lamp is already ceiling mounted, which hinders the actuation operation.
US Patent Application 20150137699 discloses a method for associating a first wireless control device with a second wireless control device, the method comprising: receiving, at the second wireless control device, wireless signals from the first wireless control device; measuring a signal strength of each of the wireless signals received by the second wireless control device; determining whether a change has occurred in the signal strength of the wireless signals received by the second wireless control device; and associating the first wireless control device and the second wireless control device when the signal strength of the wireless signals received by the second wireless control device has changed. However, the disclosed association technique is not applicable when both the dimmer and the lamp are stationary.
Another association technique known in the art involves clicking in the controller, or dimmer, the lamp's serial number. However this technique necessitates knowing the lamp's serial number and is not applicable in the case of a dimmer with a simple user interface.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an automatic method for associating a lamp, typically though not necessarily a dimmable LED lamp, with a typically wall mounted device that serves as an ON/OFF switch as well as wireless based dimmer. Also needed in the art is an advance method to allow better user control of the latter system when it assumes a backup mode of operation in the case of AC line voltage outage.